Fingerprint verification systems for personal identification include ones where a latent finger pattern is formed first and then scanned and ones where the finger print pattern is scanned while the finger is held in a pressed position against an optical surface. In the latter systems some have a flat finger contact surface which limits the scanning area and is subject to variations or distortions of the minutiae depending upon finger pressure. Other such systems use a deformable contact surface such as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,120,585 and 4,340,300 to increase the area of contact and still other systems use a contact surface having a shallow elliptic indentation as set forth in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin Vol. 8 No. 3 dated August 1965 page 435 entitled "Fingertip Orienting and Ridge Viewing Apparatus". Although the contact area is increased when using a concave depression, the light rays reflected off the curved surface tend to diverge and undergo refraction. Additionally the image focuses on a curve. Also, because parallel light rays impinge upon a curved surface at different angles, there is not total internal reflection of all parallel incident light rays and consequently the image area is reduced with previous systems. The present invention results in an increased image area even though the finger contact surface is a cylindrical elliptical surface.